A few years ago a skeleton of a dwarf with fetters on the legs was dug up near Bishopsgate, supposed to be that of a patient of Bedlam. The road in front of the second hospital was formerly called "Old Bethlem" and was changed to Liverpool Street in honour of Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister 1812-27.
The Hon. Artillery Company, which originated here, removed to the present Artillery Ground in City Road in 1622, and has numbered amongst its officers Charles II., when Prince of Wales; James II., when Duke of York, after the Restoration; and George IV., when Prince of Wales, as Captain in Command. The old Artillery Ground in Bishopsgate Street has left reminiscences of its existence in the names of Artillery Lane, Artillery Passage, Gun Street, and Fort Street.
From a very remote period has the company of Leathersellers been connected with Bishopsgate Street and its vicinity. In the Norman age the tanners, curriers, and leather dressers clustered about Cripplegate and further eastward, where the stream of Walbrook entered the City, that locality being the Bermondsey of the period. The Company is supposed to have been formed in the Saxon times, but little or nothing is known of it until 1372, when the wardens and seniors presented a petition to the Corporation praying that stringent measures might be put in force against fraudulent craftsmen who used inferior dyes for staining their skins. They were incorporated in 1397-8, and were re-incorporated by Henry VI. in 1444, with power to elect four wardens and fifteen members of the court, and to use a seal with arms. The charter is a magnificent specimen of penmanship, and beautifully illuminated. There is a picture extant of the king presenting the charter to the four kneeling wardens in livery dresses of red and blue, furred at the edges, descending to the knees, and fastened at the waist with a girdle garnished with white metal. By this charter they were empowered to regulate the mystery in London, which powers were enlarged by Henry VII., who extended their supervision of the trade throughout the kingdom. In 1604 James I. granted them a new charter, which, like that of Henry VI., is a wonderfully fine specimen of art, with an emblazonry of the company's arms and an illumination of eight liverymen in their robes of office—black gowns trimmed with "foins," hoods of scarlet, and black flat caps.
The first hall of the company was built in 1445, in the parish of All Saints' by the Wall, south of the present Finsbury Circus, where now stand Leathersellers Buildings. A century after it became too small, and a portion of the site and buildings of the dissolved priory of St. Helen was purchased in 1543, and the nuns' hall converted into that of the company, which, with alterations and embellishments, came to be for a long time the finest livery hall in London. The ceiling was enriched with beautiful pendants, and at the end was a splendid Elizabethan screen, elaborately decorated. In the courtyard was a pump with the figure of a mermaid, from whose breast issued wine on gala occasions. It was the work of Cibber, who gave it in 1679, in payment of his admission fee to the membership of the company.
In 1799 the hall was sold along with other of the priory buildings, to clear the site for the building of St. Helen's Place. A new hall was built on the same site, but with new fittings, all the antique decorations of the old hall having been disposed of. This, the third hall, was destroyed by fire in 1819, the valuable collection of records being fortunately saved, and the present hall, occupying the north-east corner of St. Helen's Place, was built 1820-22.
The first record book of the company commences November 12th, 1472, with the following as the earliest entry: —
"Wyllyam J. Curtes gave to us this boke,
For to regystre every wardenn's tyme in;
Pray for hym when ye doe loke,